Multimodal Literacies MOOC’s Updates

Update #3 Issuer - recepient phenomenon

I have always been fascinated by the writing - issuer/ reading- recipient effect.

As a Teacher, when having writing lessons, I usually encounter in textbooks and workbooks the “proper” structure for writing, for example, an essay. We go through introduction, main ideas, supporting ideas, opinions and conclusions to teach the “proper” format of an essay.

Then the students have different kinds of exercises, not only that involve writing, but also the comprehension of a text, divided in chunks that they have to place in an specific part of the essay or different paragraphs that have to be placed in the correct order including introductory, main ideas, and conclusive paragraphs.

During this exercises students have discussed with me and their peers, their choices as correct. They argue about points of view and perspective, and to be sincere, sometimes I also believe the “Answer Key” is questionable.

I do understand that giving structure to a second language is absolutely necessary. On the other hand, I also believe that for non-scientific purpose texts, the writer should capture their particular essence in a text, and this means to “break” some rules.

As I stated at the beginning, the writer / issuer of a text writes up a plot which will be interpreted by the reader / recipient through its own experience, or as Skinner states, “Behaviorism”. Chomsky’s patterns of cognition are reflected in this interpretation of the text. So, how much of what we write arrives in the same meaning to the reader as the one originally conceived?

I am really interested in this phenomenon and would like to study in more detail. Thanks to the video of Grammar Multiliteracies and their 5 questions that involve “meaning” I believe writing can get less regulated and more conveyed to meaning. Now, some things don’t change and the 5 phases of the writing process I believe are totally current and give us the necessary structure to the text, whichever its meaning is.

https://www.ets.org/s/toefl-essentials/test-takers/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/writing

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-writing/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw8amWBhCYARIsADqZJoXYNOTp0wwbqpbskPhEJJwqx3GIVJpuowBUSa9eF2zKdjTNJK4Mu

  • Elizabeth Mayne